Free Sites May Curtail Use in Developing Countries

Posted on May 1, 2009 by David

This article from the New York Times this week discusses how many advertising supported web sites are challenged by growing numbers of user from developing countries: In Developing Countries, Web Grows Without Profit.

Web companies that rely on advertising are enjoying some of their most vibrant growth in developing countries. But those are also the same places where it can be the most expensive to operate, since Web companies often need more servers to make content available to parts of the world with limited bandwidth. And in those countries, online display advertising is least likely to translate into results.

This intractable contradiction has become a serious drag on the bottom lines of photo-sharing sites, social networks and video distributors like YouTube. It is also threatening the fervent idealism of Internet entrepreneurs, who hoped to unite the world in a single online village but are increasingly finding that the economics of that vision just do not work.

According to the article, some companies are offering, or considering, scaled back services to these audiences to limit bandwidth costs for low profit traffic.

This is an interesting consideration for web strategy when your desired web audiences include people in developing countries. You may not be able to leverage or rely on free services that are funded through advertising to spread your message and build engagement abroad outside the developed world. You may have to develop your own channels with which to do so if this trend continues.

The Opt-in Panopticon

Posted on April 29, 2009 by David

A story is making the rounds about a Swiss woman who was fired by her employer after they saw her active on Facebook while she had told them she was too ill to work with a computer and stayed home.

Regardless of the facts of the story above, it does illustrate a new dynamic that we are all wrestling with as a society: how to balance our personal, private, and professional identities online.

Welcome to the opt-in panopticon, where you chose to make your online activity easily observed by others.

A panopticon is a type of prison design proposed by Jeremy Bentham in the 18th century. The design allowed every prisoner to be viewed from a single point, which creates the perception among prisoners that they are always being observed, even when they are not. The design is still influencing prison design today.

In the context of social media, we are moving to an online environment where we are all prisoners and guards in the panopticon. The more you use social media to reflect your current status and actions (think Twitter or Facebook status updates) the more you are placing yourself into a self-imposed panopticon. You never know who might be following your actions so you must behave as if everyone is following them. This includes: friends, family, spouses, children, employers, employees, clients, members, IRS agents, you name it!

This is certainly a rather negative analogy and ignores the benefits of social networking and other participatory media. However, it is a genuine factor to be aware of and prepared for.

Some things to consider for yourself and your staff or volunteers:

Educate staff and volunteers to this new dynamic and how the separation of personal and professional online is increasingly hard to maintain;
Set expectations for representing the organization online;
Be forgiving. The next variation of Warhol’s famous aphorism may be that we will all be stupid online for 15 minutes. If you fire everyone who makes a mistake online you’ll have very few people left!

What do you think? How might this impact your organization and how you work with your staff and volunteer leaders?

What if Cuba Opens Up?

Posted on April 22, 2009 by David

I’ve been a bit stunned by the recent events between the U.S. and Cuba. President Obama lightened up some restrictions and Raul Castro made statements that they are willing to talk and everything is on the table.

It still may not come to pass but it’s a bit more feasible today that trade and travel may open up significantly between the two countries. Fidel Castro walked back Raul’s statement today but it’s still a very interesting possibility if not inevitable.

As a thought experiment, let’s say this does come to pass in the next couple of years. What will be the impact of open trade between the U.S. and Cuba? What opportunities will it create?

A few things I can think of include:

Knowledge transfer on almost any business or professional topic you can think of;
Cuba expertise;
Start-ups;
Acquisitions;
Privatization of government operations;
Huge flow of people both ways on business assignments;
Tourism and travel;
Infrastructure (from roads to water to telecom).

I would anticipate South Florida becoming a staging point for all things Cuba, creating a huge local boom in the economy. A colleague pointed out to me that Tampa was historically a major port for Cuba trade and could become so again, bringing investment to that area.

For my association colleagues, what might an open Cuba mean for your members, profession or industry?

Pitchforks and Torches 2.0

Posted on April 16, 2009 by David

We’ve had several examples of the social media tools du jour being used to propagate outrage at an incredible rate. Too fast for organizations that are actually paying attention to respond quickly enough for the people concerned about the issue. A couple examples:

Amazon got into hot water about deranking gay and lesbian titles in their catalog;
Dominos Pizza had a rather disgusting prank video posted (link goes to NYT story, not the video!) by some employees that made the safety of their food somewhat suspect.

And that’s just this week!

Both issues were genuine concerns for the public and each company’s customers. Both corporations have responded via policy, PR and online. And yet the online world, with the epicenter on Twitter, created a great hue and cry with incredulity that neither company had responded to the issue within an hour or two of them going big time on Twitter. If these topics had just stayed on Twitter it might be such a big deal but they were quickly was covered by blogs, online news sites and eventually the national media.

Corporations, even those that live online such as Amazon, simply can’t respond that fast even if their culture and policies would ultimately do the right thing.

Something must change to defuse these kinds of issues. Asking Twitter users to give the companies some time to respond is highly unlikely to work! Therefore, the solutions has to lie within the company. Overall, organizations will have to improve how the speed with which they react and engage online even if they don’t have a formal response yet.

The process may go something like this: Listen -> Identify Issue -> Engage and Acknowledge via SocMed -> Determine Action or Response -> Communicate Decision -> Enact Change -> Communicate Impact of Change.

The trick: all of that up to Engage and Acknowledge needs to happen the same day and the rest following very shortly thereafter. The question to consider with your senior team: how can you prepare your organization to react this fast to emergent issues online?

Changing From Face-to-Face to Virtual

Posted on April 2, 2009 by David

I’ve heard a few stories lately about organizations changing an upcoming event from a face-to-face meeting to a virtual meeting online. Here’s the thing to keep in mind when contemplating this kind of change:

Changing a face-to-face event to an online-only event is like an athlete changing from running shoes to diving flippers.

You can still go fast but you better be jumping into water right after you put those flippers on. If not, you will do a face plant within seconds.

Virtual events have many strengths but they are fundamentally different kinds of activities than in person meetings. The hallway goes away. The random connections go away. The sense of place is very different. Commitment to being present during the proceedings is much lower.

Sure, social media can help some but it is not the same. Why do you think so many social media people just went to the SXSW conference?

The question to ask is if you can still achieve the same goals of your face-to-face event with an online event? In many cases, you cannot. You’d be better off trying to achieve something completely different online if your in person meeting has to be canceled.

NYT API – FTW!

Posted on March 3, 2009 by David

I saw via Twitter last week (sorry, can’t remember who posted it!) this post about the New York Times Newswire API. In essence, the Times has published an interface with which you can access their latest headlines, including tons of meta data options to slice and dice your query.

This kind of API tends to result in a lot of experimentation and new value in presenting the content available via the system. Twitter’s API is a great example of this.

Pretty innovative stuff. If you are in the business of moving content this is something to check out.

C. David Gammel, CAE

Helping associations pursue goals that matter.

Category Archives: Strategy